Thursday, December 21, 2000
Today, faster processors or different combinations of parts no longer seem to mean enough to the consumer to justify buying a new machine, when their software already runs fine on the one they've got. The result is the very slow-down the industry is facing now. And then, there's Apple. No matter what we think of the results, there's no denying that Apple is still trying to blaze trails in the PC marketplace. ... It's exactly this daring approach that the PC industry needs right now.
Posted: 12:49 AM
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Sunday, December 17, 2000
When their legitimacy is in doubt, when they make unpopular choices, there's thunderous reaction in the country. We're not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
— Richard Shenkman, a presidential historian, in
the same Times story, pointing out President Ford's struggles and the lesson of the three 19th Century presidents who did not win the popular vote. None won re-election.
Posted: 11:28 PM
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Never has the bar been set lower. I don't think the American people really expect him to do that much that quickly.
— Stephen J. Wayne, a professor at Georgetown University, who studies the relationship between the president and Congress, in
a New York Times story looking at the early challenges of George W. Bush's presidency.
Posted: 11:25 PM
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Thursday, December 14, 2000
A racially and ethnically diverse student body produces significant educational benefits such that diversity, in the context of higher education, constitutes a compelling governmental interest. In situations such as this, it is often a thin line that divides the permissible from the impermissible. ... The need for diversity lives on perpetually.
— From the ruling of Federal Judge Patrick J. Duggan upholding the University of Michigan's admissions policy that gives extra "points" to underrepresented minorities,
as quoted in The New York Times. Duggan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
Posted: 7:59 PM
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It shows the importance of seeing racial and ethnic diversity in a broader context of diversity, which is geographic and international and socio-economic and athletic and all the various forms of differences, complementary differences, that we draw on to compose classes year after year.
Posted: 7:52 PM
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Wednesday, December 13, 2000
What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. ... The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. ... Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
Posted: 11:44 PM
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This is an ending that is likely to exacerbate the bitterness. While Democrats will certainly respect the authority of the court, this decision will leave a lot of Democrats feeling that this was not a fair outcome. It will make divisions harder to heal. I think the court may have put a huge burden on Bush.
— Democratic pollster Geoff Garin in
a Washington Post story analyzing the Supreme Court decision that sealed the Presidency for George W. Bush and the Democrats plan for a comeback.
Posted: 10:50 PM
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If the vote were flawless
You can always raise criticisms. You can never know for sure. But I think when you do it at a very fine level like this, at the precinct level, it's very interesting, a good projection of what could have happened.
— Alan Agresti, a professor of statistics at the University of Florida who reviewed the methodology of the Herald's analysis.
Statewide, at least 185,000 ballots were discarded, either as undervotes (ballots that for whatever reason didn't record a vote for president) or overvotes (ballots where more than one candidate was selected).
Those ballots then were assigned to a candidate in the same proportion as the candidate had received in each precinct as a whole. Under that analysis, Bush would have received about 78,000, or 42 percent, of the uncounted votes, and Gore would have received more than 103,000, or 56 percent.
The overall rejection rate for the 43 counties using optical systems was 1.4 percent. The overall rejection rate for the 24 punch-card counties was 3.9 percent. That means that voters in punch-card counties, which included urban Democratic strongholds such as Broward and Palm Beach counties, were nearly three times as likely to have their ballots rejected as those in optical counties.
Palm Beach, home of the infamous butterfly ballot, and Duval, where candidates' names were spread across two pages, had 31 percent of the uncounted ballots, but only 12 percent of the total votes cast.
Historically, about 2 percent of votes in presidential races don't count -- most often because voters skipped the race or their marks weren't recorded by counting machines. Florida's rejection rate this year, however, was around 3 percent.
The analysis tested even higher percentages of nonvotes, ranging from 10 to 90 percent of the 185,000 discarded ballots. In each instance, Gore still earned more votes.
43 percent of the uncounted votes were undervotes. If that pattern held statewide and every undervote were tossed out, ignoring the entire chad issue, Gore still would have a 13,000-vote margin.
If the undervotes are counted using the experience of Broward's manual recount, where approximately 20 percent of the undervote ballots yielded a vote, Gore's net statewide total rises by about 1,500 -- enough to overcome Bush's 537-vote official margin.
But if the standard used is the much stricter one that prevailed in Palm Beach County, where only 5 percent of the undervote ballots yielded votes, Gore's statewide net gain would be about 390 votes, not enough to overcome Bush's lead.
That, however, is the only scenario in which Gore would not overtake Bush.
Only one of every 40 ballots was rejected in precincts Bush won, while one of every 27 ballots was rejected in precincts Gore won.
Posted: 12:57 AM
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Tuesday, December 12, 2000
The public is notoriously ambivalent about issues relating to poverty and welfare. Americans both want people to leave the welfare rolls and want to prevent hardship, particularly among children.
— Professor Matthew Diller commenting in
a New York Times piece about studies that challenge the conventional wisdom about the economics of welfare, including that most of the early 90's increase in caseloads did not come in the core program of benefits paid to single mothers and their children
Posted: 11:29 PM
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Considering that (mobile internet) users pay for airtime by the minute, one of our users calculated that it would have been cheaper for her to buy a newspaper and throw away everything but the TV listings than to look up that evening's BBC programs on her WAP phone.
Posted: 10:03 PM
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Tuesday, December 05, 2000
You must have a good reason. No one goes on strike without a very good reason. Usually, it's the arrogance of your boss. Otherwise, everyone would prefer to be working at the job they love, doing your best work.
—
May Spencer Vecsey, as quoted by her granddaughter, Laura Vecsey, who is a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when she isn't on strike. May helped organize the Long Island Press in the 1930s.
Posted: 10:11 PM
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So here is the new mission of the modern journalist: licking the boots of the ruling class. ... Elite newspapers churn out aristo-porn to lure upscale advertisers who want to sell expensive gunk. I understand that. We here at the Globe would probably stand on our heads for a Bulgari watch ad. But alas, not everyone in Boston owns a swimming pool.
Posted: 8:32 PM
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